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Drawings & documents · Fees

Fees overview

Price a project from hours, a percent of construction cost and a cost per SF side by side, and check one against the others.

Alpha tool. It's early and still changing: expect things to break, and keep your own copy of anything you can't lose. What alpha means

Fees works out what to charge for a project. It estimates the hours, sets the fee three ways side by side (a percent of construction cost, a cost per SF, and hours × rate), and checks the fee you pick against the hours. It splits the fee by phase and adds expenses, travel and markups to reach a proposal total.

It can also price design-build work, or run a pro forma for a project you develop yourself.

Every number is an estimate, not a bid or a guarantee. The seeded costs and region factors are rough public references; your own numbers beat them.

What you're pricing #

At the top of the left column, What you're pricing sets the mode:

  • Professional services: your design fee. The headline is the Proposal total.
  • Design-build: your fee plus the construction price. Adds a Design-build tab. See Design-build.
  • Self-development: a pro forma with land, costs, a loan and a sale. Adds a Pro forma tab. See Pro forma.

The main screen #

  • The toolbar: Project ▾, the estimate's name, New, Import, Export ▾ and Share / Snapshots.
  • The left column (Project): the mode, project type, region, areas, construction budget and start, service scope and quality. Every tab reads from it. On a phone it starts folded; tap it to open.
  • The headline strip: Construction (mid), Chosen fee, Billable hours and Proposal total, plus Contract price in design-build, or Profit and IRR in self-development.
  • The tabs: Fee, Hours, Phases & expenses, Construction cost, and the mode's own tab.

The project inputs #

  • Project type: free text, like "Single-family residence".
  • Region: a state or metro area. The hint under it shows its cost factor. Your own factor overrides it (0 uses the region's). Where the region factors come from names the source.
  • Conditioned SF, Unconditioned SF (garage, storage) and Exterior built SF (decks, patios).
  • Construction budget: the actual budget, if you know it.
  • Construction start: when the pro forma's months begin.
  • Service scope: Design only, Design + permit set, + construction documents or + construction administration. Each includes the ones before it.
  • Quality: Low, Mid or High.

Start a new estimate #

Fees isn't on a project page's + New menu yet. Start it from the tool:

  1. Open Fees. It opens on its home page.
  2. Under Start fresh, pick + Blank (no tasks: type a budget or areas and go) or a template:
    • Architecture — full services
    • Interiors
    • Small job / survey
    • Design-build
    • Self-development pro forma
  3. To save it with a project, open Project ▾ and click Push to a project….

The templates use made-up sample areas and tasks so the numbers show. Replace them with your project's.

Inside the tool, New clears the estimate and starts blank (it asks first). A new estimate starts on this computer and never replaces one saved in a project. See Projects and schemes.

If you're signed out, the templates open as a demo: you can edit, but nothing saves or exports.

Open existing work #

  • From the home page: Your fee estimates lists the one you were working on and every estimate in your projects.
  • From inside the tool: open Project ▾. The bottom of the menu lists the estimates in your projects.
  • From a file: click Import and pick a .fees.json file. It opens as new work on this computer.

To get back to the home page, open the tool's address again (or reload the page).

Export #

Export ▾ has:

  • Summary picture (PNG) and Summary PDF: one page with the fee three ways, the phases and the totals.
  • Workbook (Excel): the hours, fee, phases and construction cost (and the pro forma) as sheets.
  • Tables (CSV): one CSV per table.
  • Fees file (.fees.json): the whole estimate. Import it to get it back.

See Exports.

Use an estimate in a proposal #

A Proposal in the same project can link to this estimate and read its fee split by phase, rate, construction budget and expenses. The link is set up in Proposal. See Linked sources.

Who can see it #

An estimate you push into a project is shared with that project's people. See People and roles. Until you push it, it's only on this computer.

An AI assistant connected through the AI connector can read an estimate, but can't change it.